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TiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. ,^Sj.5lP 
Shelf - ,iL5'l 



UNITED STATES OP AMEKIOA. 




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^^ BY CK[\.RLE^ K'G^Lt\.ai^QrTtiE JH(\.RTPOF\D CQUf^[\^hfT^^ 



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A SPOOL OF THREAD. 




THE i?PINSTEB 



IT takes seven rnillion miles of thread to 
hold the people of the United States in 
their clothes. If each person has three sets 
of clothing a yeax' — and certainly that is a low 
average, — there is created in consequence a 
yearly demand for more than twenty million 
miles of this little strand, which, by itself 
and on the spool, seems so insignificant that 
it is only by taking an aggregate view that 
we realize the importance of the thread -mak- 
ing industry. It is one of the oldest occupa- 
tions of the race; indeed, there is no record 
of when spinning-wheels began to turn, and 
the complete story of the development of 
the fine six-cord spool-cotton of to-day from 
the old-fashioned hand-made yarn, involves 
a large part of the romance of hiiman inven- 
tion and almost the whole history of me- 
chanical progress It could not be given 
without a sketch of cotton, .in its political as 
well as physical relations ; nor without 
accounts of the inventions and improvements 



of the cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny, the 
"mule," the water-wheel, the steam-engine, 
and countless other contrivances for quick 
and accurate work. 

The making of the spool-cotton used in 
this country is mainly confined to a few 
large manufactories, for the processes are 
so elaborate and expensive that it is not 
possible to conduct the whole business ex- 
cept upon a large scale. There is but one 
company in America which makes all the 
numbers of six-cord sewing cotton from the 
raw material. This is the " Willimantic 
Linen Company " of Connecticut. Other 
makers take for their finer numbers cotton 
yarn, which is spun abroad, and twist it 
into thread here. The company began 
Ijusiness for the manufacture of linen; but 
the managers, deprived of flax by the 
breaking out of the Crimean war, turned 
their attention to cotton thread, and that is 
now the entire product, though it bears the 




M \N ( IKL ^\ ITII DISTAFF 



stamp of the originar corporate name, and 
is the WilHmantic Linen Company's spool- 
cotton. 

Many visitors to the Centennial Exhibi- 
tion at Philadelphia will remember the 
interested crowds that gathered about the 
exhibit made by the company; and the 
legend, "America Ahead," with which the 
award of the judges was announced. The 
award was the more welcome to Amer- 
icans because it used to be accepted as a 
fact that suitable yarn for fine thread could 
not be spun in the United States. The 
moisture of Great Britain, especially the 
atmosphere of Scotland, was declared to 
be essential for making the yarn properly. 
But this obstacle — which is not the only 
one that was met and removed in the busi- 
ness — was finally overcome. A certain 
amount of moisture in the atmosphere was 
necessary, and a certain amount of heat; 
and, as these enter directly into all the cal- 
culations of the work, it was absolutely 
essential to complete success that, being 
established, they should not vary. Now, 
the climate does change in New England. — 




^.,. ^ 



A^ 



k^m^r- 




LNDIAN GIRL SPINNING. 



iZjU 



that is, assuming that there is one there at 
all, — and the ingenuity which eventually, 
perhaps, will conquer the whole region, first | 
took up the matter in the Willimantic Mills i 



and got over this serious bar to making 
thread by first making a climate; and, while 
the work was being undertaken, instead of 
imitating the Scotch or any other foreign 
climate, a perfect and original one was cre- 
ated. Steam heat keeps the air in each 
room of an even temperature all the time, 
and escaping steam, rising gently from the 
floor, moistens the atmosphere to just the 
necessary extent. More or less of heat or 
dampness can be had by the turning of a 
handle; and, right in the middle of a state 
where snow falls on ripe strawberries and 
the January thermometer rises to the eight- 
ies, there is already one spot that knows 
no change. In its perpetual evenness, the 
fibers of cotton are spun into a imiform 
thread. 

"Willimantic, where the works of this com- 
pany are located— the business ofiices are at 
Hartford, — is situated upon "Willimantic Riv- 
er, about 100 miles from New York and 90 
from Boston, on the New York & Boston 
Air Line Railroad. Two other.railroads, the 
Hartford & Providence and the New Lon- 
don Northern, pass through the place, and 
hundreds of their passengers every 
day catch sight of the great, gray, six- 
stor}^ mills of the thread company, 
built up of granite quarried out of the 
very ground on which they stand; 
and see, too, the rows of neat and 
comfortable tenements ranged along 
the streets. There are four large 
mills, picturesquely set upon the east 
bank of the river, and stretching, 
with their surrounding grounds, over 
a space of three-quarters of a mile. 
The buildings and grounds are 
noticeably clean and orderly in ap- 
pearance. By a series of dams, 
aided by a sharp natural fall, a force 
of fifteen hundred horse-power is 
secured from the river for the fac- 
tories. In these mills more than a 
thousand work-people — women and 
men. and girls and boys — are kept 
constantly busy at the various la- 
bors that combine to make thread. 
The process is peculiarly clean, 
clever, and entertaining, and the 
accuracy and apparent intelligence 
of the machinery employed put 
human nature's best endeavors to 
the blush, until reflection gives 
the re-assurance that man made the ma- 
chinery. 

There is not room here for, nor have peo- 
ple any inclination to read, technical de- 




illLLS OF THE WILLIIIANTIC LINEN COMPAlyY, WILLIJI ANTIC, CONN. 



scriptions of the various machines employed, 
but a few words as to the difference between 
the old-time and modern methods of treat- 
ing cotton and of spinning may be of inter- 
est in this connection. /The first attempts 
at working cotton over were slow and 
clumsy. To clean out the dirt and 
seeds from it was a long, difficult work, done, 
of course, by hand. The cotton was spread 
out and beaten, and a day's work would not 
clean enough for a yard of cloth. Now the 
"picker" cleans about a thousand pounds 
a day, and needs no attention but to be 
kept supplied. Carding, which is really 
combing out the fibers, just as a woman 
combs her hair, except without a mirror, 
was all hand work, and then with much time 
and effort the workmen only partly suc- 
ceeded in laying the fibers parallel to one 
another. Now, a carding-machine catches 
the confused mass that comes from the 
picker, and smoothes out the strands with 
an almost fairy-like hand into a gossamer 
web that is even and clean and nearly 
light enough to float in air. These fila- 
ments, drawn out and worked over by 
machinery, are finally spun into yarn upon 
the "mule," that ingenious machine which 
takes the place of the old-time "spinster," 



and mutely does as much spinning in a 
day as she could do in ten years, besides 
doing it better. It has not, however, 
thrown woman out of work. It has merely 
changed the nature of her occupation, 
so that she is now able to give to mak- 
ing clothes the time formerly given to 
spinning the yarn the clothes were to be 
made of, and the increase of cleanliness 
that has come from this cheapening and 
increase of clothing has been an important 
factor in improving the physical and moral 
health of the people. 

The term "spinster," by the way, as is 
probably generally known, comes from the 
spinning-wheel. This was introduced from 
India into England in the time of Henry 
VIII, and spinning became so important 
and general an element of household work 
that it gave its name to women to whom 
that duty fell. The spinning-wheels " came 
over in the Mayflower," and the women 
continued to spin here until the English 
jenny and mule were so perfected as to 
take away their tiresome but rather pictur- 
esque employment. Even now, spinning- 
wheels are very plenty, and thousands of 
them, only partly broken down by age and 
neglect, are stowed away in country garrets 



all through the older states. The present 
revival of the antique and disabled in do- 
mestic furniture, and their utter uselessness, 
have combined to give them a passing pop- 




Flax. 

cotton, eilk, and flax (fibers magnified 1,000 

diameters). 

ularity as parlor ornaments. They were 
used for wool and flax, but the cheapening 
of cotton by the Whitney gin was the means 
of superseding them, as there was thus pro- 
vided something against which domestic 
competition was useless, while the same 
principles of spinning machinery, of course, 
came into play in woolen as in cotton man- 
ufacturing. As we have said, woman was 
promoted from spinning to sewing, and 
later she has to a great extent ceased to 
sew, and merely guides the machine that 
does the work for her. Never, in the his- 
tory of the world, has she worn so many and 
6uch various products of the spinning-wheel 
and needle as now, showing that the change 
effected by machinery has been steadily in- 
creasing her comfort. 

Cotton yarn and cotton fabrics are old to 




Georgia. Sea Island. 

COTTON STAPLE. — FULL SIZE. 



the world. Herodotus told of the vegeta- 
ble fleeces of India that grew finer than 
wool, on trees. But it is only recently that 
sewing-thread of this material has come 
into use. It was a New England woman 
who developed the idea. Up to that time 
people had sewed mainly with linen and 
silk, but about the beginning of this cent- 
ury Mrs. Samuel Slater of Pawtucket, R. 
I., while spinning into yarn some of the - 
fine Sea Island cotton, took the notion^ 
of making sewing-thread from it, and it 
proved so very serviceable that it has vir- 
tually superseded all other substances for 
ordinary use. It is cheaper than silk,/ 
more pliant than linen, and smoother than 
wool, and it is stronger than any of them. 
"While it will not lift the same weight to its 
size that silk or linen will, it is to be remem- 
bered that this is not the especial purpose 
of thread. It is made for holding seams 
together and to bear a certain strain, to be 
sure, but especially to withstand the friction 
that comes of wear; and to-day, if a piece 
of Willimantic spool-cotton and a piece of 
silk or linen of the same size be drawn, one 
against the other, until the weaker is worn 
out by the rubbing, it will be found that the 
cotton holds firmer, and finally wears the 
rival strand in two. This only illustrates 
the peculiar fitness of the Sea Island cotton 
for thread-making. It is the best adapted 
of all fibers for twisting. It does it from 
force of habit. Each filament of it has a. 
natural twist of a thousand turns to the inch 
of its length, and is a delicate corkscrew in 
shape, of such airy lightness that it takes 
twenty-five hundred fibers, laid side by side, 
to measure an inch in width. These fibers, 
called the staple, twist almost of their own 
accord into a perfect strand, round and com- 
pact. The difference between the Sea Island 
and the ordinary cotton of manufacture — 
the Georgia or Texas product, for instance 
— is shown in the cut, which is a careful re- 
production from actual full-size copies. Its 
staple is much longer and finer, and it is 
only on the Carolina coast islands that this 
fine staple can be raised. It is in limited 
supply, and always the most expensive in 
the niarket, but the results of its use are 
so superior to any from the shorter staple, 
that the addition in cost is compensated by 
the addition in quality, and in the Wilh- 
mantic six-cord thread nothing else is used 
from the coarsest to the finest sizes. This is 
the only thread all of the numbers of which 
are made of Sea Island cotton. 

The requirements of good thread are that 



it shall be smooth and round, and of even 
size and equal strength. And when it is 
remembered that each needleful, as drawn 
off by the seamstress for use, is a test of the 
whole spool, and any spool is a test of the 
entire product of the factory where it is 



The difference between the living and the 
automatic seamstress is that the former can 
get along with an inferior article but the 
latter cannot, and the best incidental evi- 
dence of the success of the Willimantic 
efforts is found in the fact that at Phila- 
delphia, where all the sewing-machines of 
the world came into competition on their 
own merits, all but two of them used the 
Willimantic thread. "When the group of 




PlCKING-ROOiM. 



made, it will be seen that every yard of the 
thread is a specimen sample, and that the 
manufacture is constantly under the closest 
supervision by consumers. But while hand- 
sewing, as a matter of convenience and 
ease, called for an even thread, the intro- 
duction and very wide-spread use of the sew- 
ing-machine has called for the same qualities 
as absolutely essential. Sewing-machines 
take now ninety per cent, of the thread that 
is made, and in order to do their own work 
these automatic seamstresses must be satis- 
fied or they summarily strike. It was just 
as sewing-machines began to come into use 
that the manufacture of Willimantic thread 
on an extensive sale began, and the whole 
bent of the business there has been to supply 
a proper thread for machine use, since any 
thread that suits a machine suits anywhere. 



judges tested the machines, they tested 
them all with Willimantic thread. Its pecu- 
liar twist and finish are such that it makes 
a surer and better "loop " for the machine 
stitch than any other thread. 

In the elaborateness of the processes of 
manufacturing, and in the single devotion 
to purpose found everywhere, the WilHman- 
tic mills show the constant care necessary 
to maintain the quality of the product. 
The chief purpose is to secure evenness. 
From beginning to end the effort is to 
get a strand so uniform that any two 
yards of it taken at random will be exactly 
alike in size and weight, and the working- 
over of the material for this object is so 
frequent that each individual fiber of cotton 
in any spool of this thread has traveled over 
more than three thousand miles of space 




MULE SPINNERS. 



within the mills during its transformation. 
Beginning at the opening of the bale, we 
will follow it somewhat along its journey. 

It is first piled in great heaps upon the 
floor of the "picking-room." This is the 
Sea Island cotton of commerce, with its inev- 
itable impurities. A fixed quantity of this 
is weighed out upon the scales and spread 
over a fixed space upon the machine, and 
this relation of space to weight, begun here, 
is never to the end of the work lost sight of. 
Upon the constant observance of it depends 
the quality of the thread itself. The picker 
picks or beats out the dirt and seeds, and 
the purified cotton rolls out of the machine, 
drawn into a form very much like cotton 
batting. This is carried to the carding- 
room. The principle of the carding-machine 
is the same as that of the hair-brush or the 
curry-comb. It arranges the cleaned fibers 
parallel to each other. After this has 
brushed the knots and snarls and confusion 
out of the cotton, the strand is again run 
between sets of rollers, one set revolving faster 
than the other. This is "drawing," and the 
drawing is one of the most important parts 
of thread-making. If one set, for in- 
stance, turns ten times as fast as the other, 
the strand that passes out between them is, 
of course, ten times lengthened and ten times 



as fine as the original. This is a •' draft of 
ten," as it is called. The drawing may be 
in any ratio, and any number of strands may 
be run together into one at the same time 
that that is drawn. Five strands, for ex- 
ample, drawn with a draft of ten. would 
make a new strand half the size and ten 
times as long. This process of uniting 
strands is called doul>ling, and the doubling, 
running together, drawing down, and re- 
uniting and redrawing are kept careful ac- 
count of, so that the size of the strand and 
the amount of work on it are, or maj^ be, 
constantly known. The operation is re- 
peated again and again, until the original 
strand, if it could be followed up, would be 
found reduced to millionths of its original 
size. The doubling from first to last is 
about ninety million times ! This means 
that the cotton is so worked over that it is 
entirely mixed, the identity of everything but 
the fibers themselves has disappeared, and 
one piece of the strand is so much like 
another that the two cannot be distin- 
guished. But all this doubling is not done 
without interruption. After the first few 
drawings, the long white ribbons of cotton 
which, in this condition, are called " slivers," 
are put into another machine, which combs 
them over again to make certain of getting 



out all foreign substances, and it also, with a 
sense that never misses, deliberately combs 
out the short fibers and allows only the long, 
selected and precisely suitable staples for 
making the best thread to pass its sentry- 
post. The short fibers, which are about a 
quarter of the whole, are not wasted, but are 
sold for other manufactures. The cotton 
which has passed the approval of this critical 
guardian of the future thread is still further 
drawm and doubled and reduced in size, 
until it has almost lost its inclination to hold 



ing it, which is traditionally characteristic of 
the beast of the same name. Mule spinning is 
too intricate to describe, but a constant enter- 
tainment to watch. The roving, having been 
wound upon bobbins, is ranged in long rows 
of them before corresponding rows of spin- 
dles, and the two are connected by it. The 
frame of spindles moves quietly away and 
they begin to revolve, and at once the strand 
is drawn by the motion of the frame and 
twisted by the revolution of the spindles. 
When the length taken out has reociived 




"COTTOM NEEDS WATCHIN'." 

together. At this point it is put upon still 
other machines, and receives there its first 
twist. This makes it "roving." This roving 
is further drawn and doubled and reduced, 
until finally it is ready to be spun into yarn. 
Right here, a few definitions are necessary. 
The '• sliver " is the cotton " drawn " and 
doubled; as soon as it has received a twist 
it becomes "roving," and "roving," when 
it is spun, becomes yarn. Spinning is the 
simultaneous "drawing" and twisting, and 
is done by the "mule." There is a fastidi- 
ous philology that says the "jenny" is a 
vulgarism for "engine," and the "mule" a 
derivative of the German " miihle," mill. 
But there is really no doubt that the poor 
mechanic, Hargreaves, who invented the 
jenny, named it for his wife, or that the 
title mule means mule, and was given to the 
machine because of the difficulty of manag- 



sufficient twist the spin- 
dle as quietly gathers 
it in and winds it up 
as it goes back for a 
fresh start. The marvel of it all is the math- 
ematical precision with which it begins, 
stops, and reverses, and the care with which 
it suitably vai-ies its work each time to the 
needs of its case. The mule is all the while 
attended by a barefooted and lightly-dressed 
man or boy, whose business it is to unite 
such strands as accidentally part. He is 
kept as busy as a dog in a tread-mill, since 
the constant motion to and fro of the 
frames would make it necessary for him 
to shift position constantly to avoid being 
hit; but, as he flies about, he catches up 



the broken strands and starts them to- 
gether again with consummate skill, and as 
deftly as if it were the simplest thing in the 
world, instead of a very clever trick. On 
these mules the yarn is made of any size 
that is reqtiired. It is at Willimantic spun 
down to a fineness that rivals even 
the spider's work, and is so deli- 
cate that a single pound of it is 
one hundred and ninety- one miles 



acts directly to make them more pliant anc 
quiet. It was an old idea of the business that 
foreign mules were as necessary for fine 
spinning as was a foreign climate ; but the 
Lowell, Mass., Machine Shop, having built 
for this company mules that are at least the 




SPOOLING-ROOM. 



long, or almost the distance from New I 
York to Boston, or more than that from 
New York to Baltimore. In all the rooms 
where the twisting and spinning are done, 
the thermometer and hygrodeik are con- 
sulted to keep the atmosphere of even 
warmth and moisture, and the electricity 
developed in the friction is drawn off from 
the cotton by the moisture, and so the fibers 
lose the inclination to separate that they 
would otherwise have, and the moisture also 



equals of imported machinery, has added 
another to the successes of American in- 
genuity, and with American machinery, in 
an American mill, spinning American cot- 
ton, we have in the thread a thoroughly 
American article. 

The process of making the yarn has thus 
been hurriedly outlined. It is full of inter- 
est at every step, but a written description 
cannot reproduce the sight and sound of 
the busy rooms, with the buzz of machinery, 



9 



the rush of belts, the clatter of spindles 
revolving thousands of times a minute, and 
the men, women, and children moving to 
and fro waiting upon the great machines 
and the tiny threads that they seem almost 
to be playing with — a thousand people 
dancing attendance all their lives upon 
these petty strands that can hardly be seen 
across the room. lOnbe made into yarn the 
cotton in that form is twisted into thread. 
In old times three strands of yarn were put 
together and made into spool-cotton, and 
thi'ee-cord cotton is still in common use. 
But the need of the sewing-machine for a 
rounder thread led to six-cord spool-cotton 
which is made of six strands of yarn ; and 
this is the standard thread of to-day. Take 
a spool and examine it. See if the strength 
through each length of it is not uniform. 
Try if possible te find any flaws or uneven 
spots in it. Slide it over the finger and 
think of all that has been done to give it 

this uni- 

''lif'^ ^de- 



cide then whether the product is not a 
success, and the sufficient proof of the 
process. 

But still it is not only })roved at the end 
but at every step and all the time, and only 
that which stands every test survives to be 
finished. Instruments of precision are scat- 
tered all over the mills, and each room vies 
with the other in its devotion to absolute 
accuracy. We have seen that the very first 
start of the cotton in the picker-room is in 
the scales, where a certain number of pounds 
are spread over a certain number of yards 
and a ratio between length and weight is 
established. Everywhere this is traced and 
maintained, and at every fluctuation it is 
checked at once by the proper contrivances. 
"Why," I asked the foreman of the 
carding-room in the main mill, as he was 
reeling off a sample of roving to test, "why, 
when you have started the stuff right in the 
works and have your machinery in good 
order, do you keep up this constant test- 
ing ? " 

"Well," said he, and he answered with 
the sobriety of a philosopher, "cot- 
ton needs watchin' all the time. 
The fact is, it's just 
like human nature, 
you know. Some 
days it's too thick 




UYL-liOUM.. 



10 



and other days it's too thin. There's no 
dependin' on it at all, and you've all the 
time got to keep your eye on it and keep 
makin' allowance for its failin' ; I don't try 
to account for it, I watch it." 

And this " watching " is the repeated trial 
of the success of the work. It is established 
by all spinners that seven thousand grains 
shall be a pound in cotton and that yarn of 
which 840 yards weigh this pound shall be 
number " 1 . " Every now and then, therefore, 
all through the mill, a very accurately gauged 
reel or some similar instrument is used .to 
measure off an even fraction of 840 yards. 
The measurer may be careless in taking off 
his sample, but that makes no matter. At 
exactly the right point the reel breaks the 
strand and calls attention to the fact by 
ringing its signal bell. Then this sample, 
say 120 yards or one-seventh of "a hank," 









^S^^ 



*s h :'- '-'' 



^:m-- 




TWELVE O CLOCK. 



is weighed on scales also gauged to show 
the most delicate variations. If the yarn or 
roving is number one and weighs one- 
seventh of 7,000 grains it is exactly correct, 
if 120 yards of No. " 30," for instance, were 
being sampled, it should weigh one-thirtieth 
of one-seventh of 7,000 grains. Every time 
a variation appears, the cotton is made to 
thicken up or thin out as is needed. This 
testing is done repeatedly and the results are 
recorded in books kept for the purpose, so 
that the course of any of the cotton on its 
three weeks' cruise of three thousand miles 
through the factory can always be traced and 
faults found and corrected at once. Nothing 
more impresses one with the wonderful 
accuracy of the process than to watch one 
of these testings, note the exact measure- 
ment of the sample and rigidly careful 
v/eighing, and see the gravity with which 
the overseer marks down 
the pettiest variations to 
the 28,000th of a puund ! 
1 1 all tells i;pon the thread, 
and making it correct 
through all its processes 
guarantees it correct, of 
course, when it is finished. 
But after the thread is 
made the work upon it is 
lar from ended. To pre- 
])are it for market it must 
be inspected, washed, 
Ijleached, dried, perhaps 
dyed, spooled and boxed, 
and the spools and boxes 
are made in the factory 
T 00. Besides this work and 
the work of the machine 
■M \:^lf and repair shop which so 
;l;ii]ii,^,|| large an establishment 
'iji| makes necessary, there are 
i,( , III other objects of interest to 
be seen before leaving the 
principal mill. A double 175-horse-power 
Corliss engine supplements the water- 
wheels in driving the main shaft. The great 
belt races all day around its course at the 
rate of a mile a minute. A single movement 
can connect with this power a force-pump 
that drives a heavy stream of water all over 
the building, and every room is capable of 
being flooded, — the door-sills and belt- 
holes being made water-tight by guards. 
Steam can also be poured into any room, 
and among the employes there is an estab- 
lished and paid fire department. No 
matches, no pipe, no cigar, can ever cross 
the threshold of the mill under any pretext. 




11 



Taking up again the thread of our narra- 
tive, or the narrative of our thread: after 
the making is complete, the skeins are 
marked, each with a special knot, to indicate 
their size, and carried first before experienced 
women who inspect every skein carefully, 
and reject at once any where a flaw appears. 
After it has passed this scrutiny it is washed 
and either bleached or dyed. The drying- 
machine is one of the curiosities of the dye- 
house. It is a great revolving iron bowl 
which whirls about with a surface velocity 



Automatic machinery prevails all through 
the works wherever it is possible to use it. 
As we said, the "mule" alone, attended by 
one man, does the work once done by 
3,600 women. And yet with all the auto- 
matic help that exists the force of working 
people amounts to over one thousand per- 
sons. Each day at noon the moment the re- 
duced speed of the spindles shows that the 



I \ 




TICKETIXti SPOOLS. 



of seven miles a minute, and the wet thread, 
packed around the edge of this, throws out 
its moisture by the centrifugal force it re- 
ceives in this tremendous whirlpool. The 
dyeing is an especial feature of the Willi- 
mantic factory, and the dye-house with its 
misty atmosphere, its boiling cauldrons and 
its many-colored bunches of thread, is a 
strange and truly a stirring sight. Recentl}^, 
new methods have been adopted in this de- 
partment with signal success. 



power IS bemg shut off, 
the SCI amble for home 
begins, and out through 
the gieat doors the 
throng start for dinner. 
A laige part of them 
are giils, and many of 
these work upon the 
thread after it is finished, in the necessary 
labor of fixing it for market. The box fac- 
tory is an establishment by itself, where 
the pasteboard and the glue fly together 
under cunning fingers at an amazing rate. 
Then, before they are boxed, the spools are 
made up in bunches of a dozen, wrapped 
in paper and tied with a string. This 
work the girls do, and, being paid by the 
dozen, they rattle together about 1,300 
dozen spools each a day. 



12 




What takes every one's eye first, however, 
in this department, as it did at Philadel- 
phia, is the machine for ticketing the 
spools. One girl supplies it with sheets of 
prmted labels, and another feeds it with 
spools; it does all the rest for itself. Pro- 
vided with the labels, it cuts out, pastes, and 
fastens the proper mark for each end of the 
spool, and prepares a hundred spools a 
minute. Formerly, the labels were cut out 
by hand with a stamp, and then aflBxed to 
the spools by the aid of the tongue. It was 
a dry, fatiguing business, and not especially 
attractive. Licking spools was not even so 
exhilarating as school-teaching, and though 
a triumph of industry, perhaps, it still was 
not a conquest to boast of. But now the 
machine does the work of many girls, and 
its health never suffers. It is a machine 
without a tongue. The spools, each previ- 
ously covered by an almost equally adroit 
machine with exactly 200 yards of thread, 
slide down their appointed path to this 
spot, where they are duly marked and la- 
beled. 

The winding-machine, which puts the 
"Warranted 200 yards" upon each spool, 
does its work with marvelous precision. It 



"warranted 200 YARDS." 

winds just its proper amount of thread, 
and it exactly fits each layer to the 
widening space upon the spool, filling 
all up as evenly as if the thread were 
forced into its place by hydraulic pres- 
sure. The winding-machine, the tick- 
eting-machine, and the automatic spool- 
making machine, inventions belonging to 
the Willimantic Company, are so essential 
to the thread business that the privilege of 
using them is rented by other manufactur- 
ers, and they yield a handsome revenue in 
this way. 

Evexybody knows the sizes of thread. 
Every seamstress knows whether she wants 
No. 30 or 60 or 120, and knows, when she 
hears the number, about what is the size of 
the strand alluded to; but how the numbers 
happen to be what they are, and just what 
they mean, not one person in a thousand 
knows. It is a simple matter to explain. 
The standard of measurement is the same 
alread}^ recited. When 840 yards of yarn 
weigh 7,000 grains (a cotton pound), the 
yarn is No. 1 ; if 1,680 yards weigh a pound, 
it will be No. 2 yarn. For No. 50 yarn it 





TICKETS FOR THREAD. 



13 



would take 50 x 840 yards to weigh a pound. 
This is the whole of the yarn measurement. 
Thread measurement rests on it. The early 
thread was three-cord, and the thread took 




SPOOL ROUGHING MACHINE. 



its number from the number of the yarn it 
was made of. Xo. 60 yarn made No. 60 
thi'ead, though in point of fact the actual 
caliber of No. 60 thread would equal No. 
20 yarn, being three 60 strands. When the 
sewing-machine came into market as the 
great consumer, unreasoning in its work and 
inexorable in its demands for mechanical 
accuracy, six-cord cotton had to be made, as 
a smoother, rounder product. As thread 
numbers were already established, they were 
not altered for the new article, and No. 60 
six-cord and No. 60 three-cord are identical 
in size as well as number. To effect this, 
the six-cord has to be made of a yarn twice 
as fine as the three-cord demands. The 
No. 60 six-cord would be six strands of No. 
120 yarn. To summarize: yarn gets its 
number from the arbitrary formula that 840 
yards weigh 7,000 grains. Three-cord spool- 
cotton is the same number as the yarn it is 
made of. Six-cord spool-cotton is made of 
yarn that is double its number. 

Up to No. 60, this is true of the foreign 
thread also; but, beginning with this num- 
ber, the foreign makers diminish the ratio in 
the six cord, thus 60 is made of 110 yarn, 
instead of 120, 70 of 120, and so on, 100 
being made of 150 yarn. In the Williman- 
tic thread the original ratio is maintained all 
the way, and the size 100 is made of No. 
200 yarn. The careful selection of long sta- 
ples makes these numbers fully equal in 
strength to the parallel numbers of the 



coarser thread of other makers, and the 
traditional mathematical latio and exact 
accuracy are thus positively maintained. 
One of the products of the company, the 
"Reid's Thread," named from Mr. J. M. 
Eeid, the superintendent of the dyeing 
department, is a general substitute for silk 
and linen thread, to which in its peculiar 
manufacture it is made to bear a very close 
resemblance. It has proved so serviceable 
because of the especial toughness of the 
cotton, which has been already alluded to, 
that it has met a very general demand, and 
already a counterfeit of it is being exten- 
sively sold as "French spool cotton," while 
the original is purely an American invention. 
The spools that the thread is wound on 
are made of white birch. Years ago the 
•'birch lot" became the by- word among far- 
mers for worthlessness in New England. 
It still is so in many places, but not about 
Willimantic. There it is as good as any 
land, and there is a sure demand for its yield 
at the mills, where about 3,000 cords are 
made into spools every year. In the fall, 
when most of the year's supply is bought, 
the procession of teams, from most ordinary 
to nondescript, is one of the sights of Willi- 
mantic, as they come winding in from all the 
surrounding country, with their great loads 
of white birch piled up behind all the live 
stock of the farm that has locomotive ability. 
A horse, a mule, and a cow will often haul to- 
gether at the cart. The factory where, twen- 




" PASTER THAN ONE A SECOND." 

ty-five years ago, thread-making was begun 
on what was thought a large scale, is nov,' 
entirely given up to making spools, and the 
sawdust and shavings go far to keep up the 



14 



fires in all the mills. The spool- 
making machinery works almost 
like magic. One operation turns 
down the wood to proper size, 
bores the hole in it. and cuts it 
off, and another takes this cylin- 
drical block, and with a whirl 
and a puff of shaving, trims it 
down to be a complete spool, 
and the spools roll into barrels 
faster than one every second, 
and all alike. 

As simple a thing as thread 
seems to be, the Willimantic 
Company makes 1,200 different 
kinds, and it takes 10,000 dozen 
spools to hold each day's prod- 
uct. There are 200 yards to a 




1, Dunham Hall (the library); 2, to the library; 3, "Modem 
Gothic"; 4, decorative art. 

spool, and a little calculation will show that 
this means that, simply at the "Willimantic 
mills, 13.(j00 miles of thread are made each 
day, or about 4,100,000 miles a year. This 
means more than 1.200 miles of thread an 
hour, or 20 miles every minute. And, as 
the combined work of 1,000 employes 
makes 13,600 miles of thread, even division 
demonstrates that the work of each is equiv- 
alent to 134- miles of thread daily. Yet it 
is evidently not an exhausting life. There is 
a look of health about the people and of 
content about the place. 



15 



The company has lately added much to the 
comfort and beauty of the place by putting 
up. opposite the main mill, a graceful and 



greatest yarn in Windham is that about the 
" frog-pond scare." A few rods east of Wind- 
ham proper is a pond of moderate size, out 




WINDHAM PROG-PONl>. 



attractive public building. It is of unpainted 
brick, in the modern Gothic style of archi- 
tecture. On the ground floor are a grocery 
and household provision store and a meat- 
market, and a broad stairway leads to the 
dry goods and millinery and boot and shoe 
departments on the next floor. The whole 
is fitted up in admirable taste. On the third 
floor is Dunham Hall, a free reading-room, 
with a free circulating library, established 
and named in memory of the late Austin 
Dunham of Hartford, one of the founders 
of the company, and for years its President, 
who was one of the foremost men of Hart- 
ford in the promotion of industrial and phi- 
lanthropic objects during his life. The 
library contains about 1600 volumes, moi'e 
than half of which are in constant circula- 
tion at the homes of the operatives. The 
privileges of the place are thoroughly ap- 
preciated. The well-clothed, comfortable, 
healthy-looking people of the factories 
have not a dissatisfied appearance. In the 
twenty-five years of the company's exist- 
ence there has never yet been a general 
reduction of wages. 

The making of spool-cotton is only twenty- 
five years old in Willimantic; but Windham, 
of which Willimantic is a borough, more 
than a hundred years ago offered bounties 
for the best linen thread, and has a tradi- 
tional refutation for sninninf» vajns. The 



of which flows a small stream. It is related 
that one night in July, 1758, during the war, 
when the people slept rather uneasily for 
fear of attack, mysterious cries came down 
out of the clouds for ''Colonel Dyer" and 
"Elderkin, too" (two prominent men of 
the place). The calls were heard, and the 
people gathered, and finally the town reached 
a pitch of terror that only dayhght could 
relieve. It did relieve it, and it showed the 
shores of the pond green with the bodies of 
dead frogs. Some said there had been a 
frog battle; others that the frogs had had a 
sudden plague, and had sung as they died, 
like their colleagues the swans; others that 
the pond had been evacuated by the frogs, 
under some unaccountable freak, and that 
they had marched through the town, thread- 
ing their way to Willimantic River. Some 
take old Samuel Peters's account of the affair, 
published as a specimen lie in Scribnee 
for June, and, showing its falsity, argue the 
falsity of the whole story. Young people 
joke on the matter now; but it once admit 
ted of only sober consideration at Windham 
The tradition was taken up by the Wind 
ham bank managers and their bills that cir 
culated for years before the national bank 
ing system was established bore the mystic 
figures of a live frog and a dead one — the 
two sides of that night's terrible combat, or 
one side of the varieo-ated anecdote. 



16 



But if the Windham yarn of two hundred 
years ago was a myth, the Wihimantic yarn 
of to-day is a fact, a slender one but consistent. 
Out of the yarn is made the thread. Perhaps 
it is not necessary to speculate upon what we 
should do without thread. Dr. Livingstone 
found a people who built mud baskets on 
their heads, and all that they wore was a bit 
of cotton cloth, stowed away in this basket. 
Idle tradition tells of an eastern monarch 
with a favorite costume of postage stamps. 
We might not be absolutely driven to either 
of these resorts, if suddenly deprived of 



this useful product, yet it is well enough 
to remember that the first distinction be- 
tween man and the inferior animals is his 
desire for dress. Thread, to-day, is what 
holds his dress upon him; and so, in a sense 
it is by a thread that we are lifted above the 
rest of creation. It at least, under the cir- 
cumstances, is entitled to our respectful con- 
sideration, and possibly the story of what 
it is, and how it is made, will help to create 
more of an interest in what is commonly 
" nothing but a spool of thread." 




'ELDBBKIN, TOO I" 



CONNFXTICUT SUCCESS IN COTTON-SPINNING. 



From Hartford Courant, July 30, 1879. 



An interesting discussiou as to the comparative suc- 
cess of Great Bi'itain and America in spinning cotton 
lias lately been going on in the English trade journal 
Coiion, tlie London Times, and the New York Herald. 
Mr. B. F. Nourse, of Boston, the well-known statistician 
and expert, a while ago replied to a series of questions 
regarding our manufactures that were sent to him by 
David A. Wells, who had received them from England. 
The Cotton took exceptions to some of Mr. Nourse's 
answers, especially to one where he says we spin finer 
thread here than is spun by macliinery in Great Britain. 
Mr. Nourse has written another letter proving his state- 
ments, which was published in the New York Herald, 
the Cotton having come to au untimely end and sus- 
pended since it expressed its doubts of American supe- 
riority. Mr. Nourse, quoting Mr. Edward Atkinson, 
cites the Willimantic company of this city as spinning 
finer than any English concern, and he gives the follow- 
ing interesting details which are fresh evidences of the 
triumph of our Connecticut industry. He writes (to 
the Cotton): — 

To the question, " Do American manufacturers pro- 
duce successfully the finest qualities of cotton cloths, or 
do they still confine their attention to low and medium 
qualities?" my answer (in part) was, "American manu- 
facturers do not produce the finest qualities of cotton 
cloth, such as muslins, fine cambrics, etc., not because 
they cannot , (finer thread having been spun here than 
any ever produced by machinery in England), but be- 
cause the available markets for such cloths would not 
sustain a manufacture of sufficient magnitude to be 
profitable." The words in the parenthesis above quoted 
provoke your remark, "We ought not to have bare 
assertion here." They were inserted after my manu- 
script had been finished, at the instance of Mr. Edward 
Atkinson, for many years a prominent manufacture!'. 
Their statement may have been indiscreet. Let us see 
how far it is sustained. 

Mr. Atkinson writes to me under date May 20th, as 
follows: — "I am informed that a statement made by 
me to you has been questioned, to wit: 'finer thread 
having been spun here than any ever produced by ma- 
; chiuery in England.' The three-cord No. 550 thread 
produced by the Willimantic company, suitable to be 
xised on a sewing machine, was my warrant for this as- 
^ sertiou. At the time I also supposed that the same 
company, in spinning No. 1,100 single yarn on a mule 
in the open air of their factory, had accomplished finer 
yarn spinning than had been reached in Great Britain; 
but I have since learned that this was an error, a much 
finer number having been spun there. But it was made 
on a small mule, specially constructed, and operated 
imder a glass case. Such excessively fine numbers 
have, of course, no commercial value. More important 
is the success of the Willimantic company in spinning 
No. 120 for regular commercial uses on a ring spinning 
frame. This success and our recent progress in fine 
work in several of the mills promised good results, as 
the work done on the ring frame is cheaper and stronger 
than that of the mule." 
Before receiving Mr. Atkinson's letter I had applied 



for a statement of facts to Mr. William E. Barrows, the 
treasurer (and examiner) of the Willimantic Linen com 
pany, whose large mills for the production of sewing 
thread (now wholly of cotton) are in the state of Con 
necticut. From this letter 1 condense the following 
statement: — 

1. Our fine numbers of thread are made for use on 
sewing machines. They are three and six ply, made 
from Nos. 300, 400, 500, and 550. The finest numbers 
are used for pillow lace making, and judging fronr the 
demand, give good satisfaction. 

2. The finest number of thread regularly sent to for- 
eign markets by this company is No. 100 six-cord, made 
from 200 yarn. 

3. The finest yarn we have spun on the American 
ring spinning frame (built by the Lowell Machine shop, 
Lowell, Mass.), with the Sawyer spindle, is No. 320. 
This was experimental, the yarn not used for regular 
thread. We regularly spin on ring frames No. 120 yarn 
for No. 60 six-cord sewing-cotton. 

4. We have no climatic or atmospheric dilficulties. 
The yarns sent are the best proof that we have no 
trouble. 

5. We do prefer American machinery. The self-act- 
ing mules, built by the Lowell Machine shop, give less 
trouble than foreign built mules in the same numbers, 
lOO's to 140's. 

6. All our overseers and more than one-third of our 
work people are Americans— a sufficient guarantee of 
their intelligence. 

7. The most profitable numbers for us to spin are 
120's to 140's. 

8. See the accompanying certificates of the compara- 
tive merit of our sewing cottons, from the expositions 
of Paris and Philadelphia, and from American and 
Maryland institutes, and the reports (1876) of M. Louis 
Chatel. 

9. We do not import any machinery for better work 
or cheaper production. Combers and hand-mules are 
not yet made in this country, and we are obliged to im- 
port these machines. 

10. I believe our extra fine numbers— 400's, 500's, and 
550's— are finer threads than any ever produced by ma- 
chinery in England. All of these fine numbers have 
been tested on power-sewing machines at a speecl of 
eleven hundred stitches per minute, giving satisfaction. 
Experimentally we have spun No. 1,100 on a hand-mule 
of 640 spindles, 60 "stretch," U gauge. Our usual fine 
work is 140's to 200's on mules, and 80's to 120's on ring 
frames. 

I send you some samples, among them are Nos. 300 
and 400 hank roving, made on a fly frame built by the 
City Machine company of Providence, R. L 

With the letter of Mr. Barrows came a package ol 
samples from the Willimantic mills, which I forward 
to Manchester for your inspection. The package con- 
tains: — 

One cop each of Nos. 100, 120, 140, 160, 275, 375, and 
400 mule yarn. 

One bobbin each of Nos. 90 and 120 frame yarn. 

Sample of No. 550 yarn; samples of each Nos. 100, 
200, 300, and 400 hank roving. 

One spool each of Nos. 250, 350, 450, and 550 three 
cord thread. 

One spool of No. 125 six-cord thread; and 

One spool (2,400 yards) of No. 60 six -cord tlu-cad. 



I All I I I i J A Ik I 



I O 



LTHE BEST THREAD for SEWIWG MACHINESJ 



f W I 



I ivif-nii I I M 



Tni.l.' Mark Patented. 



